Microsoft Admonished by U.S. District Court Judge

An anonymous reader writes "The Seattle Times reports that the judge in the z4 'product activation' patent infringement case has increased the jury's original $115 million verdict against Microsoft by $25 million. Both Microsoft and Autodesk (another defendant) were admonished by the judge for misconduct. The judge wrote 'The Court concludes that Defendants attempted to bury the relevant 107 exhibits ... in a massive pile of decoys' and called one failure to disclose evidence 'an intentional attempt by Defendants to mislead z4 and this Court.'"

Can chairs be thrown in court?

[alexandreracine]

I bet they can.

Pile of decoys?

[krell]

"judge wrote 'The Court concludes that Defendants attempted to bury the relevant 107 exhibits ... in a massive pile of decoys'

I see that Microsoft is still retaining Elmer F.U.D. for his legal services.

Re:Microsoft acting unethically?

[schon]

You're misreading it...

It's critical that no one person in a company ever appears to be above a code of ethics.

Maybe MS's code of ethics doesn't cover lying and theiving...

Or maybe they're planning on adding it in MS Ethics 2.0.

Re:Pile of decoys?

[CheeseburgerBrown]

"I would like to introduce into the evidence, your honour, this wooden ducky. Let the wooden ducky be known as Exhibit FUD. See the ducky dance? Dance ducky, dance."

Snakes in Court?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just had a great movie idea.

Re:Snakes in Court?

[OverlordQ]

What's the tag line going to be?

"I'm tired of these motherfucking chairs, on this mother fucking stage . . . . DEVELOPERS!"

Re:Microsoft acting unethically?

[struppi]

After installing update 919951 which patched a critical vulnerability in MS Ethics 1.0 service pack 1 some customers have reported problems when MS Ethics fails to detect lying and/or theiving. Microsoft has announced a new version of security update 919951 on August 22, 2006. This new version was to address this problem for customers who use MS Ethics 2.0 Service Pack 1.

Microsoft is also aware of public reports that this issue could lead to a buffer overrun condition for customers who use MS Ethics 2.0 Service Pack 1 and who have applied security update 918899. We are not aware of attacks that try to use the reported vulnerability at this point, nor are we aware of customer impact at this point. Microsoft is aggressively investigating the public reports.

-- original source: Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 unexpectedly exits after you install the 918899 update http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923762/en-us [microsoft.com]

No, no, no... "on the internet"

[Overzeetop]

You mised the part of the patent application that specified "on the internet." That makes it both unique and non-obvious, because doing anything on the internet is completely different than doing it off the internet. Hasn't /. taught you anything about the USPTO this past decade? ;-)

Re:Microsoft acting unethically?

[JustOK]

They have ethics. Just not ones you like.

Re:Microsoft acting unethically?

[MECC]

Microsoft - mislead a judge?!?!?

Preposterous!! Never in a million (well okay, ten) years!!

Re:Microsoft acting unethically?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they're planning on adding it in MS Ethics 2.0.

Now you're just being silly.

Everyone knows that you should always wait for version 3 of any Microsoft product.

Re:Microsoft acting unethically?

[truthsearch]

Maybe MS's code of ethics doesn't cover lying and theiving...

That's not a bug in their code. It's a feature.

Re:For a few dollars more....

[jthill]

Another advertisement for home schooling.